Statute and society: What Maharashtra’s 80 repealed laws say about who we were under our colonial masters

The Bombay Abolition of Whipping Act, 1957

Whipping as judicial punishment had British-era roots. The Whipping Acts of 1864 and 1909 allowed flogging for offences including theft and rape, and for juvenile offenders, sometimes in addition to other sentences. Women were exempt. The 1864 Act specified the instrument. Cat-o’-nine-tails was meant for adults (maximum 150 lashes), a light rattan for juveniles (maximum 30 stripes) and was administered before a Justice of the Peace and a Medical Officer. The national Abolition of Whipping Act came in 1955; Bombay, which had its own specific legislation, followed in 1957. The repeal of the Whipping Act was seen as a step towards the modernizing of the justice system where such corporal punishments were no longer allowed.

The Maharashtra Opium Smoking Act, 1936

Through the 18th and 19th centuries, Bombay Presidency was a primary exporter of opium, mainly to China. As the transit hub, the city acquired its own culture of consumption. Opium was smoked in two forms, madak and chandu, in dens called madak khanas that were widespread across the city.

Opium production in Calcutta in 1900 (Wikipedia)

The 1936 Act prohibited both the smoking and the assembly of persons for smoking, and penalised possession of instruments for the purpose. Post-independence, the Bombay Prohibition Act and the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act absorbed these provisions.

The Bombay Abkari Act, 1878

Abkari, which was revenue from liquor and intoxicating drugs, was a major provincial income stream for the British. The 1878 Act was designed, as historian Nandini Bhattacharya writes in a paper, to “discourage home-brewing and fermenting, largely in order to prevent haemorrhaging of excise revenue.” In practice, it hurt small producers. Historian Erica Wald notes that the Act set a minimum of 50 trees to be tapped, which “prioritised the rights of large, wealthy producers over the traditional toddy-tappers of Bombay, the Bhandaris.” Overnight, the Bhandaris were priced out. The Act was eventually replaced by the Bombay Prohibition Act.

The Bombay Fodder and Grain Control Act, 1939

Passed the year World War II broke out, this Act gave the Bombay provincial government powers to declare ‘famine and scarcity areas’, fix standard prices, and control the movement and distribution of fodder and grain. Traders who hoarded or charged above the standard price faced imprisonment of up to two years, a fine of up to Rs 1,000, or both.

Rice farmers ploughing a rice field in Bengal, 1944 (Wikipedia)

The disruptions to supply chains that prompted such wartime legislation — and the British military’s priority claim on foodgrain — contributed to the conditions that produced the Bengal Famine of 1943, in which lakhs died.

The Bombay Cotton Control Act, 1942, and Bombay Cotton (Statistics) Act, 1946

Under colonial rule, Bombay became a vital export harbour for cotton. To prevent adulteration in exports to Europe and other regions, the British had introduced the Bombay Cotton Frauds Act in the 1860s, withdrawn in 1882.

Cotton merchants in Bombay (1850s-70s) Wikipedia

Cotton remained central to the city’s identity with the mushrooming of mills. The 1942 Act regulated and prohibited cultivation of certain cotton varieties and enforced quality control; the 1946 Act required traders and owners of cotton ginning or pressing factories to maintain stock records with the Director of Agriculture. A related law, the Cotton Ginning and Pressing Factories Act, had been in place since 1925 to check malpractices. With similar provisions now covered under recent laws including The Maharashtra Cotton Seeds Act, 2009, both were repealed.

The Bombay Adjudication Proceedings (Transfer and Continuance) Act, 1947

Passed in the year of Independence, this was a transitional law. The British had used Defence of India Rules to intervene in wartime industrial disputes and ensure uninterrupted production. When those temporary rules lapsed, labour cases that had been heard part-way by wartime adjudicators needed to be transferred to the newly constituted tribunals under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and that transfer had to preserve the stage proceedings had reached. This Act made that continuity possible.

The Bombay Weights and Measures (Enforcement) Act, 1958

After the Central Government adopted the national metric system in 1956, states needed their own enforcement legislation. Bombay’s 1958 Act replaced a patchwork of local units — seers, pounds, maunds — with uniform standards. Traders had three months to comply. After that, selling goods by non-standard measures attracted a fine of up to Rs 2,000 for a first offence; a second offence could mean three months’ imprisonment. The shift to full enforcement was completed by 1966.